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High court blocks states' climate change lawsuit

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court unanimously ruled out a
federal lawsuit Monday by states and conservation groups trying to
force cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The court said that the authority to seek reductions in
emissions rests with the Environmental Protection Agency, not the
courts.

EPA said in December that it will issue new regulations by next
year to reduce power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief
greenhouse gas. The Obama administration has already started
controlling heat-trapping pollution from automobiles and from some
of the largest, and most polluting, industrial plants.

But the administration's actions have come under criticism in
Congress, where the Republican-controlled House has passed a bill
to strip the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate global
warming gases. The measure failed in the Senate, but a majority
there indicated they would back reining in EPA in some way.

In pushing to curtail EPA's work, Republicans have accused the
administration of acting unilaterally after failing to get a bill
passed to deal with the problem. The administration has said the
overwhelming scientific evidence has compelled them to act under
existing law.

Still, in this case, the administration sided with the power
companies.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court, said the
Clean Air Act gives the EPA authority to regulate carbon-dioxide
emissions from power plants.

The landmark environmental law leaves no room for what Ginsburg
described as a parallel track, "control of greenhouse gas
emissions by federal judges."

On the other hand, Ginsburg said, that the states and
conservation groups can go to federal court under the Clean Air Act
if they object to EPA's eventual decision.

David Doniger, the Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer who
represented the conservation groups, called on EPA to impose new
regulations "without delay." The agency has said it will act by
May 2012, although the government's brief said it is possible EPA
ultimately could find "imposition of such standards
inappropriate."

The decision reversed a ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals in New York.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor did not take part because she sat on the
appeals court panel that heard the case.

The decision is the second time the court has weighed in on the
issue of climate change, and the role of government to do something
about it. The ruling on Monday underscores the court's earlier
conclusion that existing federal law can be used to reduce the
pollution blamed for global warming at a time when the
administration is under attack for exercising that authority.

The situation was very different when eight states banded
together to sue in 2004. At that time, a lawsuit looked like the
only way to force action on global warming. The Bush administration
and the Republicans in charge of Congress doubted the EPA's
authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

The eight states were California, Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey,
New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin. New Jersey and
Wisconsin withdrew this year after Republicans replaced Democrats
in their governor's offices.

The private defendants in the suit are American Electric Power
Co. of Ohio, Cinergy Co., now part of Duke Energy Corp. of North
Carolina; Southern Co. Inc. of Georgia, and Xcel Energy Inc. of
Minnesota.

The high court did not rule on some potential state-law claims.
Ginsburg said those are best addressed by lower courts.